dropping or picking up trips at SWA

[Torpid]

Questions for any SW pilot:

-if you wanted to drop a trip or a portion of your trip, do you place it into open time and it's still considered yours until someone picks it up?

-is it easy to drop a portion of your trip that doesn't begin or end in your domicile? (example: your OAK based and you want to give away the last day of a 3 day trip and you want to end in PHX...so whoever picks up this trip would start in PHX but end up in OAK)

-what if I wanted to pick up a trip that begins or ends out of my domicile? Is it my responsibility to get to or from that assignment or does the company positve space me?

 

[SWA GUY]

1. Your trip goes into give away, not into open time. And yes, it's still yours if no one picks it up.

2. It's easy to place into give away any portion of your trip. Whether or not it's picked up by someone is another story. Someone commuting to or from work may like to get paid to do it.

3. If you pick up a trip out of domicile, it's your responsibility to get to and from that trip. However, you could put yourself on the extra fly list in every domicile, and if skeds needs you, they will deadhead you to and from the trip. Works better if you VJA though.

HC

 

[dogg]

SWA , I have another question on the subject. Can reserves pick up trips at all and if yes can they pick up from open time and giveaway? Also, can you break up a 3 or 4 day pairing and give away parts of it and if yes, how is that done? Thanks

 

[TR4A]

For purposes of calculating legalities for open time, trip trades and giveaways, a reserve day will be considered to carry the following liability:

a. Reserve days appearing in blocks of three (3) or less carry a daily liability of six (6) hours.
b. Reserve days appearing in blocks of four (4) or more carry a daily liability of five (5) hours.
c. For DOT, EF and VJA only, an unassigned reserve has no flight time liability for the last day of his current reserve block.

For 30 in 7 legalities, you can pick up 11 hours 30 minutes for a week that has a 3 day reserve block. You can pick up 9+30 for a 4 day block of reserves in a week.

The software will not let you pickup if your 30 in 7 is greater than 29 hours 30 minutes. There is a 30 minute cushion for scheduling. Does not apply to the schedulers when they are trying to give you a trip.

Breaking of trips is done through Trip Trade Give Away. You can designate any portion of your trip you want to give away. Like only the 3rd day of a 4 day trip. Or the first or last leg of your trip.

Some one has to pick it up though.

 

[SWA GUY]

Reserves can pick up trips from anywhere(open time, give away, etc) on their days off. Additionally if a reserve is given a trip to fly while on his RAP(reserve availability period), he/she may give that away to another reserve or lineholder.

Yes, a pilot may give away ANY portion of his/her pairing. In fact a reserve can give away all or parts of his reserve block. There are some restrictions regarding giving away portions of the reserve block once the RAP has been started.

To give away all or part of a pairing, or reserve block, the pilot logs into Maestro(our scheduling program) and selects what to give away. If a pilot wants the trip or RAP, then he simply takes it. No calling skeds to comfirm anything.

HC

 

[Cosmo007]

All above is true for giving away or splitting flying trips.

To clarify reserve give-aways:
Reserve blocks can be given away in their entirety anytime. You can only split a reserve block if you have already started the block and givewaway from the current day (or tomorrow if RAP has started and you are unassigned today) through the end of the block. This keeps you from chopping a 4-day reserve into 4 useless 1-day reserves (relative to scheduling) before Scheduling can utilize you on a 3 or 4-day trip.

If you have been assigned a trip on reserve, you can:
a. give the entire flying assignment away as previous posters discussed (and stay on reserve with reserve pay)
b. split the assignment anytime it passes through domicile until the end of the trip (must giveaway from the split to the end, stay on reserve, part you flew credited to reserve guarantee)
c. giveaway the reserve block/rest of the reserve block (with the assigned trip) from today through the end of the trip (you lose the reserve guarantee pay for those days you gave away)

As far a picking up extra flying with a reserve line, past reserve days carry a 30/7 liability of what you actually flew. The current day (once RAP started) carries no liability unless you are assigned, then it is what you are scheduled for/have flown. Future days are either 6 hours/day (1-3 day blocks) or 5hours/day (4-6 day blocks) for liability, unless you have a trip, then the days the trip falls on have a liability of what you are scheduled for. So you see, your 30/7 liability can change during your reserve block depending on how much you fly or even whether you are assigned or not. You could conceiveably start your reserve block illegal for a giveaway the day follwing reserve, get to your last day of RAP with a lower liability than what you started with (flew less than 5/6 hrs/day) and be legal for the giveaway. Can be important if you are trying to maximize your pay/flying.

TMI?

Overall, the giveaway/trade procedure is painless and quick via web-based computer (Maestro), you just have to advertise. One man's trash is another man's treasure...

Year and a half reserve guy,
Cosmo007

 

[StopNTSing]

One other note on the subject:

While it is somewhat dependent on staffing levels, in general, FO 3- and 4-day trips will not be picked up in Give-Away...ergo, you cannot usually drop them. FO turns and 2-days will often get picked up. Any and all captain trips of any and all duration stand an excellent chance of being picked up in Give-Away. This is partly due to the number of captain-qualified FOs here (aka Lance-Captains), and also because we have a lot of captains who are greedy b@st@rds (as I too shall be someday).

 

[whiff]

What exactly is a lance captain?

 

[StopNTSing]

What exactly is a lance captain?

A senior FO (in top 8% at his/her domicile) that has been through upgrade and is captain-qualified. They bid FO lines, but can pick up captain trips. It's a good way to upgrade and still be able to stay in your (more senior) domicile.

 

[whiff]

Thanks for the info. Sounds like a good deal, kinda like everything else over at SWA